Ukrainian Orthodox Churchgoers and... Moscow Riot Police

Among those who participated in the eighth World Congress of Ukrainians, held in Kyiv the week before last, was Adrian, Metropolitan of Moscow, Bogorodsk, Dnipropetrovsk, and Kryvy Rih (Ukrainian Orthodox Church, Kyiv Patriarchate), who represented the Russian Federation’s Ukrainian diaspora. His Beatitude Adrian delivered a report and released a text “On the Plight of Ukrainian Churches in Russia.” The paper aroused keen interest because the Ukrainian diaspora in Russia is the largest in the world, and most of its members are Orthodox. However, only nine Ukrainian Orthodox religious organizations have been officially registered there as of today. We requested His Beatitude Adrian to share his views on the current Ukrainian religious affairs.

“How did the Ukrainians living in Moscow oblast manage to join the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, Kyiv Patriarchate (UOC KP)?”

“In 1992 parishioners, both Ukrainians and Russians, of the Epiphany Cathedral in Noginsk, Moscow oblast, headed by Archimandrite Adrian, began talks with Metropolitan Filaret on joining the UOC KP. So in early 1994 the UOC KP officially embraced not only the Epiphany Cathedral’s Noginsk parishioners but also the parish of St. Alexander Nevsky’s abode along with those of the St. Trinity Church and Tikhvin convent for sisters of mercy and charity.”

“How did the Moscow Patriarchate react to the establishment of several communities of a different, Ukrainian Orthodox, church in Russia?”

“The Russian Orthodox Church’s Moscow eparchy applied to the Moscow Arbitration Court to deprive us of the Epiphany Cathedral and a number of buildings that we, Ukrainians, had built on its territory. The litigation dragged on for five years, but the forces were too unequal. In September 1997 the city authorities sent a hundred riot police to Noginsk in order to seize both the cathedral and the Ukrainian Brotherhood center. This storm was carried out at night. All the Ukrainian Theological Seminary students and the clergy were driven, together with their wives and underage children, outside the cathedral on the street.

“Our parishioners had thus to seek shelter in an old three-story building in Noginsk, where they set up the UOC KP Church of St. Trinity. We lived and celebrated services in this building for four years, with the electricity, water, sewerage, heating, and gas cut off. It was only when foreign journalists intervened that the local administration allowed us heating and water. Then, a few years later, they gave us electricity and, when we appealed to Russian President Putin, we also got gas.”

“Your Beatitude, did the Ukrainian representations in Russia support in any way the Ukrainian Orthodox communities in that country?”

“I must emphasize that, since the Ukrainian parishes and the UOC KP Bogorodsk diocese withdrew from the Russian Orthodox Church, neither the Embassy of Ukraine in Russia nor the Ukrainian Cultural Center in Moscow have given us any help or come to see us even once. We were left to our own devices, although we repeatedly turned to the Association of Ukrainians in Russia for advice and protection. By contrast, Askold Lozynsky, president of the Toronto-based World Congress of Ukrainians, who lives so far away, found it possible to travel to Noginsk and visit the Ukrainian Orthodox community. We have also sent more than one letter to Ukraine’s ambassador to Russia, only to receive no reply. The Ukrainians in Russia do not have even one Orthodox or Greek Catholic church building.”

“Could you comment on the current situation of Orthodoxy in Ukraine, particularly, on the dominating role of the UOC, Moscow Patriarchate, in many key social spheres?”

“The point is that, among other things, the Ukrainian branch of the Russian Orthodox Church consists of archpriests and the clergy 70% of whom are, oddly enough, ethnic Ukrainians, especially from Western Ukraine. They all loyally serve the interests of a foreign church and a foreign Russian state.

“For this reason the Ukrainian people should take a very serious approach to and display patriotism and wisdom during the coming presidential elections in the fall of 2004. This will also have an impact on the social and spiritual condition of the Ukrainian diaspora and church in Russia. Perhaps in that case all our rulers will receive the advice and blessing from the Patriarch of Kyiv and All Rus-Ukraine, not from that of Moscow. Only such statesmen will be able to raise the question of a decent existence for the Russian diaspora in Ukraine and the Ukrainian diaspora in Russia, as is the case in the Baltic states.”

“How do UOC KP believers feel in Moscow itself?”

“We are absolutely deprived of any rights in today’s Russia, including the right to have our own property. It will be recalled that Ukrainian nobles built in seventeenth-century Moscow not only dozens of Ukrainian Orthodox temples but also some palaces, including one of Ukraine’s Hetman Ivan Mazepa. Paradoxically, today this palace is used by the Moscow riot police, while services in Ukrainian church buildings are performed by Moscow Patriarchate clergymen.

“The UOC KP’s Bogorodsk eparchy has two Orthodox parishes: one in honor of the Great Holy Martyr and Healer Panteleimon and another in honor of Saint Apostles Peter and Paul. Both of them not only do not have proper premises, they have failed to get a land plot to build a temple on. The Moscow authorities have sent the St. Panteleimon parish (Archpriest Yevhen Udaly) dozens of letters in the past eight years with promises to furnish a plot of land to build the church. But nothing has moved at all. This parish set up a makeshift temple in a Moscow hospital, but Muscovite priests hired some ‘guardians of true faith’ who once in the morning broke the iconostasis, took out and burned the icons. As to the Peter and Paul parish, the Juridical Authority of Moscow decided — in contravention of Russian Federation’s law — not to reregister its statute.”

“What did Your Beatitude expect from the Eighth World Congress of Ukrainians?”

“We, the UOC, Kyiv Patriarchate clergy and believers in the Russian Federation, request the presidium and members of the Eighth World Congress of Ukrainians to exert influence on the Russian authorities and officially demand that the latter extend constitutional rights and religious freedoms to our believers, specifically:

1. Furnish the two UOC, Kyiv Patriarchate, parishes in Moscow with individual buildings or premises to perform religious service in Ukrainian.

2. Make available land plots to build standard Orthodox temples for these parishes.

3. Transfer the former palace of Ukraine’s Hetman Ivan Mazepa to the UOC KP Bogorodsk eparchy for the purpose of establishment of the Eparchial Office and a Sunday school.

4. Give us back the Epiphany Cathedral and related structures in Noginsk, Moscow oblast, and compensate for a total $800,000 worth of movable property of four UOC KP legal entities, destroyed or seized by the Russian Orthodox Church’s Moscow Eparchy.

5. Furnish a room at the Ukrainian Cultural Center in Moscow to perform religious services, administer sacraments, and rites in the Ukrainian language.

6. Demand that Russian authorities register without obstruction the civil statutes of Ukrainian church parishes under the law of Russia.

7. Allow Moscow and Bogorodsk Eparchy missionaries to form our Church’s parishes on the Russian Federation’s territory, especially among the ethic Ukrainian population of the Far East, Siberia, Kuban, Transcaucasus, and Moscow oblast.

8. Suggest that Ukraine’s Ministry of Justice rename the UOC, Moscow Patriarchate, in fact a branch of the Russian Orthodox Church, as Exarchate of the ROC in Ukraine, as it was known before 1990.

“And, finally, one more thing: in 2002, when Russia declared the Year of Ukraine, we, Orthodox priests and believers, asked the Russian authorities to allow us to officially invite Filaret, Patriarch of Kyiv and All Rus-Ukraine, to Moscow and Noginsk. We received no reply. So I think Aleksiy II, Patriarch of Moscow, should equally be denied permission to visit Ukraine.”

P.S. It would be worthwhile to learn from Russia how to preserve one’s identity, faith, and undivided hegemony. Is it not true that nine Ukrainian Orthodox organizations are a drop in the ocean against the backdrop of almost twelve thousand communities and organizations of the Russian Orthodox Church in Russia? Still, Russian Orthodoxy (together with local authorities) are fighting — despite the Constitution and all international rights and conventions — against this, as if the very existence of the Russian Church were at stake, as if that church faced a mortal danger, disintegration, desecration, or doomsday. It is even more shocking that the question is not of some kind of Satanists or even Aum shinrikio but of our Orthodox brothers with whom we are supposed to be “together for ever.”